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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26144740">still a rock star</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter'>susiecarter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020), DC Extended Universe, Justice League (2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Extra Treat, F/F, First Meetings, Flirting, Identity Reveal, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:13:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26144740</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Harley's really getting the hang of this whole breaking up thing.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Diana (Wonder Woman)/Harleen Quinzel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>186</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fifth DCEU Fanworks Exchange</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>still a rock star</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathrynShadow/gifts">KathrynShadow</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>♥!</p><p>Title borrowed from P!nk, because I couldn't help myself.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>Harley's really getting the hang of this whole breaking up thing.</p><p>If there were a list, she'd have a whole bunch of checkmarks in a row. Explosions—emotional <em>and</em> literal. Is that extra credit? That ought to be extra credit. She picked out a new look, she cried into some ice cream, she got herself an emotional support hyena; there were inadvisable haircuts and using the ex's pictures for target practice and also a whole lot of Cheez Whiz. Plus the bit where she managed to successfully blow up the worst of the assholes who were coming after her to take their pound of flesh, which meant the rest of them backed off.</p><p>The most important part of a successful breakup, right there, if you ask her. Nobody ever covers that step in the advice columns and stuff. Heck of an oversight.</p><p>But after all of that, it occurs to her that there's still a big one she hasn't checked off yet. Classic, really. Not the kind of thing you ought to omit, if you're going for a world-class top-of-the-line breakup experience.</p><p>She hasn't found somebody to bang on the rebound.</p><p>Silly thing to overlook—but also a pretty easy fix, she decides. Shouldn't be a problem. She needed a night out on the town anyhow, to blow off some steam. Might as well make it count, and give this breakup one hell of a cherry on top.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Helena bought Roman's club, after it all went down, with the family money she got using that rock. Didn't want anybody worse moving in and taking over Roman's territory, and what else was she going to do with all that dough? She and Canary and Montoya needed someplace to operate out of, anyway—and Dinah still likes to sing, even if it had eaten her up doing it for Roman.</p><p>It's a pretty nice place, now. More of a mixed crowd these days, Harley knows; it's cleaned up a little. But not so much there isn't anybody interesting left at all. It hasn't turned high-end or any bullshit like that.</p><p>Plus, Harley gets drinks on the house if she makes a sad enough face, even if Dinah rolls her eyes about it, too.</p><p>Feels a lot better, getting handed stuff for free because she's herself and not because of Mr. J.</p><p>She waits until she's just on the edge of tipsy before she really scopes the place out—feeling good, warm inside, the whole evening stretching out in front of her all wide-open and waiting. She'd kind of forgotten what this was like, getting to sit back and pick and choose, getting to decide who she wants.</p><p>Which is probably exactly the point.</p><p>She laughs, and drinks some more, and keeps looking. Honestly, she almost doesn't care whether there's anybody in here that catches her eye. Like there's anything any of them got that she needs anyhow. It's just nice to be doing the looking at all—</p><p>And damn, it is all kinds of nice to be looking at <em>her</em>.</p><p>Harley blinks. The woman doesn't go away, and Harley's eyes weren't lying to her after all. Harley looks her up and then down, and every single new bit of her is just as nice as the last: her hair all wild and dark and tumbling, the way the line of her back sweeps down from her shoulders to the small of it—and the way the back of her dress is cut to follow that arc sure doesn't hurt any. There's a slit from the thigh down that Harley's also feeling pretty fuckin' grateful for right now, and her heels are actually pretty low but they're still doing some epic, epic things for her calves.</p><p>She's looking away, first, and Harley thinks, okay, well, there's <em>got</em> to be something wrong with the face, right? Balance the whole thing out. But then Mystery Chick turns her head to glance down along the bar, and okay, that is just bullshit. Nobody real has cheekbones like that. Come <em>on</em>. She's like art or something, like some kind of statue—Michelangelo, except whoever did her tits had actually liked tits.</p><p>Fuckin' ridiculous, Harley decides, but no way is that going to stop her from hopping off her stool and working her way along the bar.</p><p>Mystery Chick doesn't pull any slick moves like vanishing into the crowd before Harley can get there. It feels like it shouldn't be as easy as it is to just slide in next to her—like it shouldn't be possible to get that close to somebody who looks like that, like nobody that pretty could possibly be a real person you can actually stand next to and then nudge with your elbow.</p><p>But that's exactly what Harley does.</p><p>"So, what's a classy broad like you doin' in a joint like this, huh?"</p><p>Totally polite and friendly overture. But Harley's aware that her totally polite and friendly overtures don't work on everybody, and her track record's especially bad with people who wear dresses as expensive as this chick's.</p><p>So it's kind of a nice surprise to have Mystery Chick look over and meet her eyes and—smile.</p><p>Like everything else about her wasn't enough, the smile's great, too. Slow, and warm, and crinkling up the corners of her dark eyes like she really means it.</p><p>"Having a rather dull evening," Mystery Chick murmurs, in an accent that's weirdly hard to place. "Until now."</p><p>"Well, how about that?" Harley says, and smiles back, real big. "Me too."</p><p>"What a remarkable coincidence," Mystery Chick agrees, with a quirk of her mouth. "Somehow I can't imagine you have many of those, Harley Quinn."</p><p>And—right, okay. She's in Gotham, and she's talking to a woman with a white face, a red mouth, ponytails two different colors, and a ripped shirt that says WHAT EVEN THE FUCK across the front.</p><p>Lucky guess, clearly.</p><p>"Is that a problem?" Harley says.</p><p>Everybody in this town knows her baggage has baggage. She wouldn't blame Mystery Chick for taking a pass.</p><p>But Mystery Chick doesn't pretend not to know what she's asking, and doesn't so much as hesitate. "No," she says, warmly, like it's true.</p><p>"Well, then. You got one up on me," Harley says, and holds out her hand, tilts her head and raises her eyebrows.</p><p>"Diana Prince," Diana offers readily, and reaches back—closes her hand around Harley's, hardly a shake at all, really, just touching, touching and looking at Harley with those eyes and smiling like that.</p><p>Fuckin' ridiculous. Fuckin' ridiculous, that nobody else got here first.</p><p>Their loss.</p><p>"Don't suppose you'd mind if I bought you a drink," Harley says. Not that she's buying any of her drinks, here, but that's just a technicality.</p><p>"Not at all," Diana says.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It turns out it wasn't quite as fuckin' ridiculous as Harley thought, that nobody else had come over here first—pretty, pretty Diana Prince has a hell of a cold shoulder on her when she tries. Which she does, whenever anybody comes over and makes like they're going to interrupt or cut in.</p><p>Harley would be more insulted that anybody even dares, except she gets where the temptation's coming from. And if she hadn't seen Diana smile, she'd have said Diana was <em>made</em> to turn to people with casual disinterest, look them up and down and then away again, as if there were nothing there of any importance.</p><p>But she has seen Diana smile. It's an act—but it's a good one.</p><p>Which is pretty interesting. And Harley's always liked a puzzle.</p><p>After about half an hour and a cocktail each, a real big piece of that puzzle smacks itself down in front of her. People have been coming in and out of the club all night, revolving door of Gotham's best and booziest. And Diana hasn't been looking toward the entrance, hasn't even given it a flicker of a glance; but a handful of people come in, and about fifteen seconds later something changes in her face: just for a second, that's all, a funny kind of distance coming into her eyes, like right then she stopped listening to Harley completely.</p><p>Harley narrows her eyes. "So they got here, huh?"</p><p>Diana's attention's all hers again, Diana's eyebrows arching.</p><p>"Whoever it is you were waiting on," Harley elaborates, raising her eyebrows right back. "Tell me I'm wrong."</p><p>Diana's lips purse. But not like she's mad; the corners of her eyes are crinkling up again. "You aren't," she concedes. "I'm sorry. It has been a pleasure, truly—I am here tonight for a reason, but please don't think I was insincere in my enjoyment of your company."</p><p>"Aw," Harley says, with a flutter of her eyelashes. "Ain't you <em>sweet</em>."</p><p>Diana laughs.</p><p>"So I guess I got a whole new question for you, then," Harley adds after a moment. "What's a classy broad like you doing with any interest in what Frankie Two-Toes over there has planned for his Saturday night?"</p><p>"Frankie Two-Toes," Diana repeats, but her eyes are sharper suddenly.</p><p>"That's what I like to call him in my head," Harley informs her. "I used to know his real name, though. Pete or something? I think it was Pete."</p><p>"You were looking at me, not the doors."</p><p>"So were you," Harley tells her sweetly. "You know who I am. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck yesterday. So?"</p><p>"It may come to nothing," Diana demurs, and then pauses, mouth slanting wryly. "In fact, I suppose I hope that it will."</p><p>"Yeah, well, I'm starting to get the feeling that 'nothing' ain't going to be the word for it in a minute," Harley says, glancing over Diana's shoulder.</p><p>There's music going. It doesn't matter. The voices over there are starting to get raised right over top of it, and people wearing suits like that don't shout at each other in dark clubs in Gotham over interpersonal conflicts they're planning to solve <em>without</em> bullets.</p><p>"A shame," Diana murmurs, because yeah, she can definitely hear it, too.</p><p>Harley glances over the bar, up and down, but she doesn't see Dinah or Helena anywhere. They must be in back or something.</p><p>She turns back around—and Diana's already up and out of her seat.</p><p>"Hey," Harley says, because damn, she isn't actually going to go <em>over</em> there, is she?</p><p>She hops up. Diana's tall, and she moves like she expects everybody to get out of her way; they do. Harley can just hustle along in the wake she leaves behind.</p><p>The shouting's louder, now. They're halfway there, and people near the table are starting to give everybody at it sidelong looks, ducking away like they've figured out they don't want to be in the blast radius for this.</p><p>But not Diana.</p><p>"Okay, seriously," Harley says, and reaches out for Diana's arm—just to turn her around, to ask her whether she knows what the hell she's getting herself into.</p><p>And that's when the first spray of bullets rattles its way into the ceiling.</p><p>People scream. The music's still going, the lights and everything; makes it weird, artsy, like a scene in a movie or something. Harley's ducking, automatic, trying to decide what the best angle would be to get her foot in one of these chumps' faces—shooting up <em>Helena's</em> club, assholes, they are so not getting away with this—except then she isn't anymore.</p><p>She isn't, because Diana's caught her up, turned her: <em>lifted</em> her, straight off the floor, like it's nothing, and then she's between Harley and the guns, which turns out to be great because bullets <em>bounce off her</em>.</p><p>"So I'm thinking you maybe left one or two things out of your introduction back there, huh," Harley says, a little breathless.</p><p>"One or two," Diana concedes. "I truly am sorry. This won't take long."</p><p>It doesn't.</p><p>Harley can't catch bullets, and she can't break guns in half. She <em>can</em> kick a couple guys in the head when they try to come up behind Diana, though, because Diana doesn't need that kind of distraction; she's busy.</p><p>The last handful make a break for it, but Diana doesn't chase them down.</p><p>"Hey, aren't you going to—"</p><p>"No need. Huntress and Black Canary are waiting for them," Diana says.</p><p>So <em>that's</em> where they went. Figures. Nobody ever tells Harley anything.</p><p>But that's okay. They don't need to. She can do the math.</p><p>"So I just spent an hour watching Wonder Woman suck down appletinis," Harley says aloud.</p><p>And Diana looks at her with half a smile, wry, and says quietly, "Is that a problem?"</p><p>Harley thinks about it. On the one hand, there's a whole lot of ways this could go wrong. She doesn't—she doesn't <em>do</em> good guys. On the other hand—</p><p>On the other hand, bad guys haven't worked out so hot either. And that's the whole point of this thing, isn't it? Try new shit; live her best life. She's Harley fucking Quinn, and she gets to hit on Wonder Woman in a bar if she wants to.</p><p>She definitely wants to.</p><p>"Nah," she says. "So you want to get out of here, or what?"</p><p>"All right," Diana says, and smiles.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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